These are letters to Jack, my son, and my daughter, Audrey. You have given me the gift of motherhood. This is just a little gift back. I want to share my experiences with you of your childhood from my perspective of watching you grow - of being your Mom.

Thursday, October 01, 2009

It's been too long since I signed on. With so much going on every minute of every day, it's horrible when I stop to consider how many "moments" that I've loved will be lost because I couldn't find a minute to stop and write about them.

Audrey - yesterday you turned four months old and you haven't stopped impressing me from the minute you were born. You are such a smiley little chatterbox. So content with having anyone talk to you - just thrilled to be receiving their attention and watching their face as they respond to you.

You are reaching and grabbing for toys now. You are still pretty clumsy at it, but you are getting better and better. You are so focused as your hand shakily reaches towards the objects. It all happens so painstakingly slowly that your brother Jack is now onto this and seems to have half an eye on you at all time, judging your proximity to whatever toy he is playing with to see if he needs to rescue it from your grasp.

I'm constantly trying to lobby for you, but then you'll go and cram a car in your mouth and, when Jack retrieves the car, bathed in saliva - I can tell that you are going to have trouble the next time you want to look at something again.

Jack - where to even begin? I think the place to start is to talk about your recent venture into drawing. You are becoming quite an artist! I would say that you started out shyly enough. I tihnk you were afraid to try to draw because you were terrified that a drawing would come out less than perfect and you got plenty frustrated with early tries, but now you draw complex pictures with ease and even illustrated a book that the two of us wrote together. I have yet to bind it and give it to you so we can read it together, but I am very impressed with it and with you.

We've taken to watching America's Funniest Home Videos with you and it's a blast to watch you react to these videos much less the videos themselves. You actually got very angry watching a video where a child threw up on a birthday cake. You said "That's STUPID! That's STUPID! I DON'T LIKE THAT! He should have MOVED away from the cake!"

Apparently the unfairness of the destruction of the delicious cake was more than you could tolerate.

You also are less than impressed with videos where an animal knocks a child over. I can almost see you glaring at Hercules.

Michael Jackson recently passed away and, in that occurrence, the sudden exposure to all the music that I always loved by him has been reawakened in me. I listen to his music a lot and I'm seeing you start to like it also. Sometimes, I show you the videos on Utube. Only yesterday you told me that the kids at school were throwing grass at you and thinking they could beat you up, so you Beat It - like Michael Jackson says to just walk away from a fight.

Yes - I've been using Michael Jackson songs to teach you lessons about life.

I need to get better with the balance of things because I want you to remember these things and I know I never want to forget a single moment.

These are letters to Jack, my son, and my daughter, Audrey. You have given me the gift of motherhood. This is just a little gift back. I want to share my experiences with you of your childhood from my perspective of watching you grow - of being your Mom.